Risky Business is the Citizen Kane, but Fast Times is glorious and awesome at capturing the zeitgeist of that particular time and place like down to the month. The mall, the hair, the various people -- everything. Even the music is exactly right (proven by the fact that it would all change radically in just two short years). At the same time, Fast Times captures the eternal pain and pleasure of teen existence such that it is perfectly understandable today.

Incidentally, Crowe's book/article apparently had Spicoli as a pretty insufferable jerk, not a loveable jerk.

DAZED AND CONFUSED "is glorious and awesome at capturing the zeitgeist of that particular time and place like down to the month. The mall, the hair, the various people -- everything."

I "appropriate" (not plagiarize) 7 Machos' remark about FAST TIMES, (which I've never seen) and apply it to D & C, which has such verisimilitude it's like I'm watching a documentary made at the time of the era it documents, so closely does it feel like my senior year of high school, (which was elsewhere in the south than Texas, and a couple of years earlier than the film's setting).

I wouldn't be surprised if Obama didn't care for this movie. He was already in college by this time, walking around in a sarong reading T. S. Elliot aloud to his (composite) girlfriend after sex. He was probably far too snotty to like such a film

I loved Fast Times. Haven't seen it in years (decades?) but I think it would stand up well. Fast Times, Risky Business, Say Anything, The Sure Thing...all great movies. Fast Times had some great moments, some really funny moments. It also had some incredibly sad moments.

Dazed and Confused, though, I didn't even want to see. Maybe I missed something there or maybe I was too old when it came out.

It's an overrated movie, but it does have it's charms. I enjoy the Spicoli moments, and the Judge Rheinhold stuff, not to mention Phoebe Cates (!!!), but the romance angle was pretty lame. It works as a movie with a bunch of vignettes, but the whole isn't greater than the sum of it's parts.

Why, though do we have the Sean Penn of today and not the Sean Penn of 30 years ago. What's in the water in hollywood that warped Spicoli into someone who suppports Hugo Chavez?

It's not over rated. As a moment in time, it still holds up as entertainment. I am not a teen now so I am unable to judge how it holds up in regards to teen life today. I am pretty sure teens do not wear the "Pat Benatar look," but I am sure they try to look like current stars.

It was pre-aids look at HS that I think was pretty accurate - from the peer pressure to have sex, then how horrible it can be (losing your virginity in a filthy dug out), to a boy deserting you when you get pregnant (not holding your hand in the delivery room like Juno!), to the importantance of your car, job...all of that. The realization that the "cool" "mature" person you are taking advice from is clueless. I don't think it would have been as sensitive to teens if it had a different director.

Sorry, but if you're going to bring up anything as a "barometer of social norms," try to pick something with at least one black person in it, huh? I mean, I'm standing right fucking here, you guys. Geez.

"Fast Times" is fine as white folks' walled-off mainstream entertainment (and Penn was a revelation) but Repo Man was the real chronicle of the times, unloading wicked satire on religion, hippies, the feminization of the culture, bad music, bad parenting, poverty, the education crisis, and a whole host of other issues that we (all) had (and have) to deal with - and not just suburban kids listening to Duran Duran who thought they had it rough.

Recently I heard several references to the 1984 movie, Red Dawn, that I remember as an awful mess. Today, looking up the cast of Repo Man on imdb, I see a preview for a REMAKE of Red Dawn. Which explains why people have been talking about it, I suppose.

There are two types of people on the world: those who like Repo Man, and idiots

Repo Man was the teen movie for those of us who didn't want or need pastel-colored escapist entertainment, but - because there was so much crap like that strangling us - were desperate for a reflection of the nightmarish fantasy world we're really in.

Epic classic Americana, with lots of unknowns who went on to ... be famous but never quite as good again. Ray Walston stole the show.Robert Romanus is totally underappreciated. The Five Point Plan. "Whatever happens your toes are still tappin'." "I come here for the strudel."

Although Fast Times was filmed at Van Nuys HS, it was portraying suburban life in the San Fernando Valley in general (VN is the urban "capital" of the area). In my neck of the Valley in '82, the only blacks "in the wild" at my high school (Kennedy - Granada Hills) were bused in from South Central.

Cook, I rarely agree with you on anything, but I also see "Dazed and Confused" as incredibly accurate. It portrayed senior year 1976, which was mine, and it got nearly every detail perfect, even the mood.

San Diego, actually. Cameron Crowe grew up here, and wrote the screenplay based on Clairemont High School. Your point about the black population of the neighborhood being around 1% is accurate, though.